In his Guide to the CorMosition of Poevy, the twelfth century
Japanese scholar, Fujiwara no Teika, wrote that there are no
teachers of Japan's poetry. The ancient verses t hemselves
instruct; and of those people who are capable of absorbing their
poetical forms and learning the words by heart, who among them, he
asks, will fail to write poetry? This is not merely a tribute to
the elegance of Japanese poetry. It is rather a u niversal
statement about education: a teacher may coax or inspire or
illuminate, but the idea itself is what truly instructs. Nfissing
today in the ideas that Japan's educational system teaches its
secondary school students is an account of Japan's record in Asia
during the years that led up to the beginning of World War 111.
Absent is a complete record of her imperial ambitions in the
neighboring countries of China and Korea, of her provocation and
slaughter in the former, and subjugation of the latter. A l though
facts about the attack on Pearl Harbor are presented, the war that
followed is covered scantily. Indeed, a recent New York Times
Magazine article by Steve Weisman reported the complaints of a
Japanese high school teacher who had just introduced his students
to the war with the United States. The first thing they asked was,
"Who won?" Anniversaries, such as the one we will observe on
December 7 of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, offer an appropriate
moment to look back in time. However, the proper re a son for doing
so is not to rekindle old anger or open aging wounds. It is rather
to combine the perspective of the years which have passed with our
knowledge of history to look with increased understanding into the
future. Fundamental Questions. Tensions b etween the U.S. and Japan
have been growing for some time now. And while those strains are
not proof of a future break in the relationship, they-together with
the history we recall today-are good reason to ask fundamental
questions about the character of J apan's po- litical regime, and
of her commitment to the principles she accepted during the
American occupation. What does Japan's refusal to acknowledge an
important part of her recent history mean? Are our basic ideas of
right and wrong so foreign to Jap a n that it is impossible for her
to render a moral judgment about the wholesale slaughter of
innocent civilians? Or, is it the very shamefulness of her deeds
that makes it so hard to admit them? True, there are strong
bureaucratic and political interests t o day that exert profound
influence cover the textbook debate which is the crucible for
Japan's domestic argument over its history, but they do not change
the conclusion: Japan will not look its history in the face. And
that refusal should worry Japan's fri e nds and allies, of which
the United States is the staunchest. Not only because Japan's
unwillingness to teach the rising generations about her past
contradicts her admirable respect for education; not only because
it flies in the face of Japan's unique ve n eration of the past,
and not only because; it clashes so violently with her people's
belief in the healing power of reflec- tion and self-examination.
Tokyo Re-emerging. No. The significance of Japan's reluctance to
recognize her deeds is simply this: Fif ty years after Pearl
Harbor, following a period of vigorous economic growth that has
lasted decades, and topped off recently by Japan's dispatch of
naval vessels to missions in the Persian Gulf far from her

Seth Cropsey is the Director of the Asian Studies Center of The
Heritage Foundation. He spoke at The Heritage Foundation on
November 25, 199 1. ISSN 0272-1155. C 1991 by The Heritage
Foundation.

borders, Tokyo is re-emerging as an international power. She is
questioning what her role in the world shou ld be, where her
foreign policy interests He, and how to achieve them. Japan's sense
of being victim ized by the outcome of World War H, and her sense
of shame which, I believe, grows more from having lost rather than
having started a great conflagration a re for moral philosophers to
lay up. It is clear that her people suffered grievously in a war
their leaders began, and it is possible--however such things am
gauged-that in human misery the World War H accounts between
America and Japan cancel each other, or it is even conceivable that
because of the devastation brought upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki by
American nuclear weapons, the Japanese feel a moral debt owed them.
This is understandable, but wrong. Unlike Japan, the U.S. harbored
no imperial ambition; i t was dragged against its will into a war
it had sought to avoid. But American and Japanese perceptions
notwithstanding, there is no historical balance in Tokyo's
relations with many of its Asian neighbors. And with nations as
with individuals, how one dea l s with those who are closest is a
critical measure of one's own character. The failure to acknowledge
great injustices committed in China and Korea is a fail.! ure to
treat the peoples of those neighboring countries as equals, as men
and women whose perso nal suf- fering deserves to be understood
throughout the land so that it will not happen again, This
recognition education alone bestows.

As "checkbook diplomac, y" cannot give Tokyo a real foreign
policy, the informal compensations Japan has in various fo rms
rendered to China and Korea do not demonstrate a true change of
heart. Until Japan shows that such a change has occurred; until it
is clear that she regards her neighbors as completp equals, even
her friends, such as the United States, will question w h ether she
is entirely prepared to be- come a full participant in the
international community. Contrition is not what is called for. What
is needed here is the truth. After summarizing her deeds in Asia
during the war that began there in 1937 when Japan in v aded China,
and which served as an overturt to World War H, I will look at how
Japan teaches the history of those bitter years, and conclude with
some thoughts about the future. - Harsh Spirit. Japanis modem
colonial adventures began in earnest in 1894. N e ar the mouth of
the Yalu River, and to the surprise of nearly everyone, she
defeated the flotilla China had purchased from German and British
shipyards during the previous decade. The Sino-Japanese conflict
also saw the diverr sion of growing Japanese ult r a-nationalism
into a new and harsh spirit directed against China. Songs be. came
popular with such verses as: Evil Chinamen drop like flies, swatted
by our Murata rifles and struck by our swords. Our troops move
ahead, our troops fight away. Chinese soldi e rs massacred
everywhere. What a sight! in the treaty negotiations that followed
Japan's victory, China ceded possession of Taiwan and the
Manchurian peninsula known as Kwantung. But@ other nations were
watching closely: Russia nour- ished Far East ambitio n s of her
own. In 1895, she prevailed upon Germany and France to join in
forc- ing Japan out of the Kwantung Peninsula. Petersburg waited
three years, claimed the Kwantung for it- self, and promptly linked
the contested peninsula's- southernmost ports, Dai r en and Port
Arthur, to the re cently completed Trans-Siberian Railway. Japan's
anger at this straightforward display of international hypocrisy
produced the seed from which sprang the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.
When Admiral Heihachiro Togo crushed the Ru s sian Fleet at the
Straits of Tsushima on May 27, 1905, Japan triumphed over her
European enemy and.emerged as a world power. President Theodore
Roosevelt received the Nobel 'Peace prize for his
diplomacy.in.bring- in the -,wQmp_qt.com a4mts together to si p,the
Treaty of Portsmoqth.(New Hampshire). And Japan rer

ceived Russia's acknowledgment of her "paramount interesf 'in Korea
as well as title to Russia's claims in the Kwantung Peninsula, and
a large chunk of Sakhalin Island. Annexing Korea. Tokyo's han ds in
Korea were now freed. Prime Minister Ito made it a Japanese pror
tectorate in November 1905, and appointed himself Resident General.
Japanese nationals replaced Ko- reans in the executive and judicial
branches of the Seoul government while the Korea n armed forces
were disarmed and sent home. When eminent Koreans began committing
suicide in protest, parts of the subjugated nation rose up. The
rebellion was ruthlessly subdued. Japanese troops torched the
country- side, killing 12,000 Koreans within a y e ar. In 19 10
Tokyo annexed the unhappy neighbor it had renamed Chosen, but
political incorporation only called attention to the conquering
power's treatment of its subjects. Koreans-like the Taiwanes were
refused representation in Japan's Diet. The Japane s e expropriated
vast tracts of Korean-owned lands. When dispossessed Koreans sought
employment in Japan, they found instead low-paying jobs and open
contempt. Continuing popular resentment kept occupation forces
busy, but Tokyo was achieving its foreign po l icy goals. With
colonial administrations and troops firmly established in Korea,
Taiwan, and southern Manchuria, Japan had staked her claim to
membership in the international circle of imper- -ial powers.
Propelled by the momentum of colonial success on t h e Korean
Peninsula, and taking full advantage of the European nations'
determination to soak the Belgian forests with blood, Japan in 1915
shifted atten- tion to China. As a British ally, Tokyo had entered
World War I opposed to the Axis powers, and then s eized Berlin's
possession in Chirm the province of Shandong. Japan now presented a
document known as the Twenty-One Demands which forced the Chinese
government to accept this fait accompli, and ex- acted other
economic concessions in Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia. Between the
end of the Great War and the 1920s Japanese interest and commercial
activity in Manchu- ria continued to grow. A million of Japan's
subjects lived in the southeastern Chinese region almost all of
them Korean, and Japanese businessmen eventually accounted for
three-quarters of foreign invest- ment in the province. Local,
docile Chinese warlords governed at Tokyo's pleasure, much as
ancient Rome administered her empire-through puppets. Eyeing Asia's
Mainland. This usurious relationship s ailed along calmly until the
late 1920s when -China's nationalists began to stir. A boycott of
foreign goods and short-lived truce between the Kuomintang and
fledgling Chinese Communist party illuminated the danger of Japan's
position in Man- churia, and g enerated a current of jingoist
passions. In his 1929 book, Why Fear the United States?, the
defense writer Ikezaki Tadakata pointed to Japan's serious
overpopulation and asked, "Where should we find an outlet for these
millions? ... the only.remaining are a is the Asian mainland." A
lieutenant colonel of the Kwantung Army, Ishiwara Kanji published a
proposal to address the gathering problem in China. In it he noted
that "the future of Manchuria and Mongolia will only be
satisfactorily decided when Japan obt a ins those areas. Japan," he
continued, "must expand overseas to achieve political stability at
home." Rejecting the diplomatic and commercial incentives advocated
by Tokyo's civilian political leaders to patch relations with
Manchuria, Lieutenant Colonel I shiwara along with other mid-level
officers of the Kwantung Army took matters into their own hands. A
convenient provocation materialized on the rail- way tracks just
outside the southern Manchurian city of Mukden near where the lines
from Pusan, Port Art h ur, and Tientsin meet. There, on the evening
of September 18, 193 1, a bomb exploded. Within hours a major
attack on the Chinese garrison in Mukden had been ordered, and the
entire Kwantung Army mobilized. In Tokyo, the divided cabinet of
Prime Minister W akatsuki looked on im-

:3

potently while Japan's army in Manchuria widened the hostilities,
invading lands beyond the railway zone which had, until then,
formed the boundary of colonial jurisdiction. Rogue Military. Ile
senior officers of the Kwantung Ar my kept their own counsel,
ignored the re- quests of their nominal civilian masters in Tokyo
for information on their ultimate objectives, and con- tinued to
advance. By the spring of 1932 the entire province of Manchuria had
fallen to Japan's rogue milit a ry. The next January the Kwantung
Army took possession of the coastal city of Shankaikwan. From there
it moved west to occupy the inner Mongolian province of Jehol.
Skirmishes between the Kwantung Army and ineffective Chinese
opposition forces flared the n ext four years. But more import-
ant, tensions grew as Tokyo watched Soviet strength in its Far
Eastern provinces increase to 240,000 vice Japan's 160,000 troops
in Manchuria. Heightening the imperial power's strategic anxiety
was the possibility that Chi a ng Kai-shek's Nationalist government
in Nanjing might form an alliance with Mos- cow allowing it to
threaten Japan's continental position from the South. In July 1937,
a local clash be- tween Chinese and Japanese forces at the Marco
Polo bridge in Beijing quickly led to full-scale war. By the middle
of November the outflanked Chinese military had been all but
routed. Advancing swiftly up the Yangtze Delta, Japanese forces
launched a systematic campaign against noncombatants. An American
who had lived in Ch i na over 30 years witnessed and later
published an account of the ae- rial bombardment of the undefended
city of Suzhou, and its subsequent looting. Fifty-eight miles
south- west of Nanjing, the city of Wuhu fell on December 10.
Civilians attempting to esc a pe by sailing across the Yangtze
river were machine-gunned, and foreign nationals' property stolen
or smashed. This, how- ever, was only a prelude to the devastation
of Chiang Kai-shek's capital. Rape of Nanjing. The Japanese Army
came upon the city with i ts sword raised high. Nanjing fell on
December 13. What followed was ugly even when measured against the
surpassingly cruel record of the twentieth century. Prior to the
triumphant arrival of the commanding general Matsui Iwane, thou-
sands of men in civi l ian clothing who looked as though they may
have discarded their Chinese army uni- forms were rounded up, tied
together in bunches, and shot. Over the next six weeks, Nanjing
became a catalogue of horrors. Young girls, their mothers, and old
women were dra g gedfrom their living places and raped by Japanese
soldiers in every quarter of the burning city. Foreign eyewitnesses
reported the sound of executions by gunfire around the clock, of
small children bayoneted multiple times, of passers- by hauled off
the s t reet and put to death for no apparent reason except the
spreading and unchecked bloodlust of the occupying forces. Before
order was restored, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal later estimated
that some 142,000 innocent men, women, and children were slain. Ove
r a half century later the textbooks approved by Japan's Ministry
of Education speak of Nanjing, the war against China, and the
subjugation of Korea in phrases so untroubled by detail that it is
impossi- ble to understand what happened or guess that any qu
estions of moral culpability were raised by the events described.

In its fourth chapter, a textbook for high schoolers entitled
History ofJapanese Studies and published in 1977 explains that
Japan's army moved-and "moved" is the precise word-into Shanghai in
July 1937, and that a "strong faction" among politicians and the
military advocated the use of "harsh meth- ods." Without explaining
what this could possibly mean, students are then informed that,
although some military opinion held that victory would be swift,
the facts were otherwise. Then, almost inciden- tally, the text
declares that "Nanjing was occupied" -again, "occupied!' is the
word-in December of 1937. End of subject.

4

A 1987 high school textbook, The National History ofJapan, is even
more opaque. Nanjing is men- tioned as the 1928 Nationalist Chinese
capital. The next time the city's name appears, students are told
that a Japanese-supported government was established there in
February 1940. And, that's it. The attack on the Nanjing is simp l
y written out of existence. Another recent Japanese textbook for
high school students observes that, "in the 12th month of the same
year [1937, i.e.], the Japanese forces occupied Nanjing." True, a
footnote admits that.Japanese sol- diers killed many Chin e se
noncombatants, but the force of this admission is dulled by the
text's claim that the deaths occurred in "a sweep for stragglers,"
and by its remarkable conclusion that the episode, "stirred up
anti-Japanese consciousness in China." As though the Chine s e
deserve some portion of blame for feeling angry at those who put
them to the sword. Toothless Combs. Japan's early twentieth century
subjugation of Korea, its subsequent effort to eradi- cate Korean
national identity, and the virtual enslavement of mill i ons of
Koreans as part of Japan's war effort are brushed with an equally
toothless comb. A December 1988 New York Times article reprinted
excerpts from a New Detafled Japanese History on the occupation of
Korea: In 1905, Japan concluded an unofficial agre e ment between
the United States and then revised the treaty of alliance between
Japan and Britain, and made both countries acknowledge Japan's
control over Korea as its protectorate. Based on this, Japan
deprived Korea of its diplomatic rights and establis h ed a
supervisory government .. Then Japan assumed authority over Korea's
domestic policy. Another current history for high school students
describes Japan's effective seizure of the Korean government's
reins of power as though force and intimidation were n ever
involved, they were; as though the loss of Korean sovereignty was
an orderly process mutually agreeable to both nations. It was not.
"Me first Japanese-Korean Agreement was concluded in 1904," says
the book, and then matter-of- factly, "the second Ja p anese-Korean
Agreement was concluded in 1905 which extended Japanese con- trol
over Korean foreign affairs and set up a Korean supervisory
government in Seoul." It's as though a textbook in this country
were to say no more about the mistreatment of Americ a n Indi- ans
in the nineteenth century than to describe it as an act
necessitated by expansion westward during which the U.S. Army
assumed a supervisory role in the conduct of the rebellious tribes'
affairs. Lest there be any doubt, let me assure you that A merican
textbooks say nothing of the sort. They are quite explicit about
this sad and unjust episode in our history. Closer to modern
events, Germany's textbooks have long provided an accurate report
of Nazi responsi- bility for starting World War H in Eu r ope, and
for the regime's effort to destroy European Jewry. Photo- graphs of
the deathcamps, their doomed and murdered inmates, and descriptions
of the machinery of death carry the facts of this national crime
forward in the minds of the young. Ministry's Control. Animportant
procedural obstacle to a similar Japanese acknowledgment of its
twentieth century history is the Ministry of Education's effective
central control over the editorial con- tent of the entire nation's
wxtbooks. Since 1886, when the Meij i rulers took alarm at the
spread of West- ern political ideas like democracy, the Ministry of
Education's authority to shape the minds of young stu- dents had
grown luxuriantly. By the time of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor,
her educational system had bec o me a national instrument to assure
students' fervent patriotism, their veneration of the emperor, and
more than a little contempt for foreigners like the Chinese. After
World War H, American occupation forces tried to cut back the
Ministry of Education's considerable central powers.

5

But old habits are hard to break. Effective authority seeped back
to the Ministry in the 1950s and '60s as it took increasing
advantage of a textbook screening law passed in 1949 for the
original purpose of preventing the inclusion of ultranationalist
ind o ctrination in teaching material. Turning this authority on
its head, the Ministry eventually applied it to weaken textbooks'
descriptions of Japan's wartime deeds. The Ministry also started.
to supply local school districts with textbooks free of charge. T
oday, the local boards are free to decline a particular text, but
only from a selection approved by Tokyo. The na- tional government
remains firmly in control of the material taught throughout the
land. Politicization of Textbooks. A direct result has bee n the
national politicization of the textbook issue. After simmering for
decades, it erupted in 1982 when the Education Ministry in Tokyo
stepped up its ef- fort to dilute textbook accounts of Japan's
twentieth century aggression against her neighbors. The offic-
ially-sanctioned revisions have caused a series of embarrassing
incidents which will continue to vex Tokyo so long as it insists0n
tailoring the facts to political purposes. In 1982, the new
textbooks authorized by the Education Ministry changed th e
description of Japan's 1931 invasion of China frcm "aggression" to
an "advance." The atrocity in Nanjing was dismissed with- out
elaboration as a "mob confusion," in which "innumerable civilians
and soldiers were killed." Under- standably angry, Beijing a ccused
the Ministry of vying to "obliterate from the memory of Japan's
youn- ger generation the history of Japan's aggression against
China and other Asian countries so as to lay the basis for reviving
militarism." The new books shrugged off Japan's annex a tion of
Korea as well calling it too an "advance." The co- lonial rulers'
ban on the Korean language was turned into, "education in the
Japanese language." And, although the last Korean king, Kojong, was
forced by the Japanese to abdicate, the 1982 books s aid he had
"resigned." Seoul was incensed. When Japan's Education Minister
He1ji Ogawa stonily refused comment for six weeks, Korean
demonstrators took to the streets urging a break in diplomatic ties
and a ban on Japanese imports. Newspaper articles arou n d the
world recorded this most recent reminder of Asian fractiousness,
and ambassadors registered objections. The incident subsided with
Tokyo's promise to address Seoul's concerns, an expression of
Japan's intention "not to repeat such past deeds." The E d ucation
Ministry also pledged China that it -would, "seriously self-examine
the great harm Japan inflicted upon the Chi- nese people during the
1937-1945 war." However, when another high school history text
appeared four years later, the promised self-exa m ina- tion had
not taken place, or-as the darker interpretation put it-maybe it
had. Of the events that oc- curred in Nanjing, the 1986 version
explained that, "research has been continuing." China's Foreign
Ministry promptly accused Japan of failing to ho n or its 1982
promise. Through official channels, the Chinese claimed that the
book, "grossly distorts the history of the Sino-Japanese war."
Again, officials in Japan's Foreign and Education ministries became
involved in the effort to turn aside internatio n al accusations,
and in the end no one was very satisfied at all. Professor's
Lawsuit. Three years after the 1986 incident, the Tokyo District
Court upheld the Educa- tion Ministry's right to soften a
textbook's account of history. This elicited a comment f rom South
Korea's ruling Democratic Justice Party which accused Japan of
"trying to justify" its recent aggressive history. The author of
the textbook, Saburo Ienaga is a retired professor of history who
once taught at the Tokyo University of Education. l e naga has been
filing law suits against the Education Ministry since 1965 when he
tried to recover roy- aldes following the Ministry's rejection of
his textbook, New History ofJapan. In a part of that suit that
anyone who has ever been edited will understa nd, Professor lenaga
also petitioned the court to compens-

6

ate him'in cash for the mental stress induced by the 300
alterations he made to comply with the Ministry's original
editorial suggestions. During the 1989 trial, Professor Ienaga
testified th at the Ministry eviscerated passages describing how
Japanese soldiers had killed civilians and raped women in the 1937
sack of Nanjing, and how references to a Japanese army unit's
"human body experiments' on thousands of Chinese had been deleted
entirely . Pasdonate Debate. No doubt the effort to appear
conciliatory was behind the court's finding that the government had
indeed abused its editorial authority: Ienaga was awarded $700
compensation for the Ministry's reworking of a passage that
discussed a vol u nteer army recruited to support the Emperor in
the 19th century. The court's attempt at face-saving had no affect
on Ienaga who vowed, "to continue this fight to my death." His
remark offers a clear picture of the depth of passion on both sides
of the tex t book debate within Japan, and it is not surprising how
hody fought and bitterly contested the issue is. Rather it is a
testi- mony to the extremely serious view Japan's people take of
education, a portrait of the acrimonious divi- sions between
leftists a n d conservatives, and a telltale to the winds of
internationalism which are now blowing stronger in Japan thart at
any time since World War H ended. When U.S. occupation forces
decided to change the ultranationalistic message of the Japanese
public educati o n system, they aimed first at the Education
Ministry's nearly total control, transferring some of its authority
to prefectural and local levels. In addition, the occupation forces
transformed the ends of public education: reverence for the state
and its l e aders was replaced by less authoritarian and more dem-
ocratic goals. Finally, teachers were allowed to form unions.
Mission accomplished, the Americans de- parted. Japanese leftists
then took control of the teachers' union. Headed by socialists, the
Japa n Teachers Union (JTU) pursued a leftist political curriculum
in the class- room, and maneuvered to substitute its own power for
the control which postwar Education Ministry of- ficials were made
to relinquish. Conservative Japanese, quite naturally, resis t ed.
As a result, says Thomas P. Rohlen in his 1983 study of Japan's
high schools, the occupation forces' goal of political neutrality
for Japan's public education system has never been realized. Far
from it. The issue is as intensely politicized as it is p
olarized-both domestically and internationally. Japan's left finds
their nation's brutalization of its Asian neighbors a useful
illustration of capitalism's evils, so it agi- tates to include
graphic accounts of the past in the classroom. When the more co n
servative Education Ministry officials finish editing the passages
that offend them, or when texts written by conservatives that glide
silkily over the facts are published, word reaches Seoul and
Beijing quickly. And the Korean and Chinese governments ent h
usiastically exploit these unsought morsels from the past for
current pur- poses whether they involve obtaining trade concessions
from Japan or resolving the outstanding diplo- matic issue of the
momem In the textbook debate, politics helps force both the left
and the right away from the truth; the former to persist in Marxist
drivel about history and the wickedness of capitalism, and the
latter to deny what in fact happened. Outrageous Assertions. More
destructive of Japan's interest, the domestic textboo k wars have
re- cently escalated into attacks several national figures have
launched on the public's understanding of the truth. In a Playboy
magazine interview that appeared in the October 1990 issue,
Shintaro Ishihara the Japanese writer, now politician, and author
of The Japan That Can Say No, denied that any atrocity ever
happened in Nanjing. "People say," he noted, "that the Japanese
made a holocaust there, but that is not true. It is a story made up
by the Chinese. It has tarnished the image of Japan, but it is a
lie." Not even Masayuki Fujio, Education Minister under Prime
Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone until being sacked in 1986, would go as
far as Ishihara. Mr. Fujio didn't deny the rape of Nanjing. He
merely sug- gested that it wasn't such a. big deal. In the
September 1986 issue of Bungei-Shunju published shortly

7

before Nakasone fired him for causing a diplomatic flap by
repeatedly stating that Japan's treatment of its Asian neighbors
was justified, Fujio asserted that the 1937 massacre in Nanjin g
did not violate inter- national law. "It is not murder under
international law to kill in war," he said. In 1988, another
minister left the Cabinet for similar reasons. Seisuke Okuno, head
of the National Land Agency submitted his resignation to Prime M i
nister Noboru Takeshita after his remarks touched off angry
objections fromChina and South Korea. Mr. Okuno denied that Japan
had been the aggressor in the war fought between 1937 and 1945. He
insisted that the conflict in China had started "accidentally. "
"Japan," he argued, "fought to protect itself at a time when the
white race had turned Asia into a colony." Okuno offered these
thoughts after returning from paying hisrespects at the Yasakuni
Shrine, a Shinto holy place in Tokyo dedicated to the memory o
f"Japan's 2.5 million war dead, and the seven "Class A" war
criminals hanged for such war crimes as having "ordered,
authorized, and permitted7' inhumane treatment of POWs and others,
and of having "deliberately and recklessly disregarded their duty"
to p r event atrocities. In one of his final com- ments, Okuno, who
was 75 at the time he left the Cabinet, said that he wanted Japan,
"to stop being pulled around by the ghost of the occupation
forces." Open Sore. I believe this sentiment Hes at the heart of Ja
p an's contentious view of its past. Professor Ienaga's 25-year
dispute with the Education Ministry over its suppression of the
facts identifies an itch on the Japanese body politic. Almost ten
years ago, the irritant became an open sore. Why? Because Japan ' s
leaders-foresaw their nation's reemergence as an important global
power, blown in this direction not only by the need wisely to
exploit her vast economic power, but for very immediate and
pressing rea- sons. Jimmy Carter's 1979 abandonment of the U.S.-T a
iwan Mutual Defense Treaty, and self-doubts linger- ing in the U.S.
from Vietnam raised questions about Washington's capacity and will
to hold up its end- the important one in Japan's eyes-of the 1960
U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. F ueling
those doubts, Washington was urging Tokyo to take a larger role in
its own defense, specifically to increase military spending and
assume responsibility for its sealanes out to a thousand miles. To
com- plete this darkening picture, the Soviet Unio n , in its final
paroxysms of aggression, was bludgeoning Af- ghanistan, fomenting
revolution on America's doorstep, and generally running wild in
international streets. Japan must protect itielf. Embracing the
long-term view for which they are justly famou s , it appears that
one of the courses Japanese policy-makers adopted was to improve
the nation's self-esteem by air- brushing history. There are, of
course, other good explanations for why the textbook issue burst in
the early 1980s: maneuvering with neigh b ors, and power shifts in
the left-right squabble, to name a couple. What is not subject to
scholarly dispute is the Ministry of Education's centrally-directed
laundering of history. The diplomatic protestations Beijing and
Seoul have been making since 198 2 should have registered by now in
Tokyo, as should the concerns of Americans expressed over the
years, and most recently by The New York Tbnes article I mentioned
earlier.

The ghosts Mr. Okuno wished to rid his country of will not be
exorcised by ignoring them nor by pre- tending that the events they
represent didn't happen or were insignificant. Clearly, the
Education Minis- try cannot surrender its central authority for
reviewing texts. It would slip inevitably into the hands of an
energized, ideologica l ly left, and well-organized teachers union.
But it is just as plain that, however honorable their motives, the
impulse of Japanese conservatives to cloak the past in the
untruthftd fabric of omission and misrepresentation is certain to
be counter-producti ve. Tokyo's falsification of history will
continue to provide the governments of mainland China and South
Korea's with irresistible diplo-

8

matic opportunities, and leave the rest of the world uncertain that
Japan understands what it did well enough not to do it ag The time
to correct this error is now. And, not only for the welcome
political message which Tokyo would send the world were it to use
the 50th anniversary of its attack on Pearl Harbor as an
opportunity honestly to confront the past. The mor e important
reason for closing the textbook controversy today was suggested by
newly-elected Prime Nfinister Miyazawa in his November 8 speech to
the Diet. "We must recognize," he said, "that our international
role in the building of a global order for pea c e can only grow
larger.19 A nation as wealthy and b-idustrious as Japan can be a
great force for peace. But Japan's aversion to looking squarely at
her past and accepting the moral judgment of her actions will leave
other nations wondering quite naturaRy w hat internal sense of
conduct will guide the way she treats others in seeking peace. Does
Japan now understand that ruling another people without their
consent-such as the Ko- reans-is wrong; is Tokyo's democratic form
of government a bow to Western sensi b ilities, or has it truly
been embraced in the years since the American occupation; is
Japan's own commitment to popular rule deep enough to come to the
aid of another whose democracy is threatened? Accepting Nations As
Equals. If Japan truly wants to ente r international affairs as an
important and respected participant, then she must be prepared to
make concessions to certain fundamental principles Of the
international community. Among the most important is the need to
recognize other nations as equals. Ac c epting this does not
require agreement, friendship, or even cooperation with other
powers. Denying it opens the way for invasion, plunder, and rape as
Saddam Hussein reminded the civilized world last year. So long as
Japan forswears her aggression in Chin a and Korea the first half
of this century, her willing- ness to treat other nations with the
same respect she expects of them must be in doubt. When Japan ac-
knowledges the past as wrong, the world will know that she is ready
to join the international co mmunity as a full and active member.
The ghosts will sink into the distance.